


the blue night gone fragile

by strangetowns



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Break Up, Canon Compliant, Missing Scene, Multi, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 08:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14076825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: Today. Today was the ending of things. He could feel it in the rain, in the shadows on the wall. In the nothingness inside of him.-The first time Even and Sonja break up.





	the blue night gone fragile

**Author's Note:**

> I have to admit this fic was kind of an accident; i had some feelings and, like i usually do with strong feelings, i wanted to turn them into words. and i decided it had to be a break up fic, but I couldn't bear the thought of writing a break up fic for Even and Isak, so I wrote this instead. I'm not entirely sure I think this is what really happened, honestly; it's pretty much just me venting into the void. but it is canon compliant as far as i can remember! And it takes place the day before the PAUSE clip of Season 3 Episode 5. so there's that.
> 
> (E: Oh and i should probably mention that Even/Isak is only implied in this fic, though of course their relationship plays a significant part in the events and conversations that are happening. I took my chances with the tagging; sorry about that.)
> 
> Thank you very much to [Arin](http://arindwell.tumblr.com/) for reading over this for me and being an enabler. Title is from "[Twice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrpMncSZe-I)" by Little Dragon. There is also a playlist i made that pretty much fueled this fic, though I didn't make it specifically for that purpose, that you can check out [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/strange-towns/playlist/2RFLu1IsHMFMemWcRpdnfG) if you want.

It rained in the night, while he was sleeping. That was the first thing Even felt rather than saw when he opened his eyes. The rain had always seemed to have a particular way of seeping into his bones when it fell - grey in his veins, misty cold in his lungs. He felt it this morning. He shivered with it, the feeling of it inside his chest. It wasn’t dark in the room because the curtains weren’t drawn, so he could see the drops of water on the window that had yet to vanish, streaking down below the sill and leaving behind trails that glistened silver in the light.

Light perhaps wasn’t the right word, not when the clouds were so low in the sky, so heavy. He didn’t know what the right word was. Right now, he didn’t think he knew what the right word was for anything.

It wasn’t dark in the room, but there were more shadows on his walls than anything else. They were grey, too, greyer than the rain. An absence of light rather than a presence; insubstantial, blurry things. He knew a little of what that was like, to be blurry around the edges. Blurry in his head.

This morning, he thought, belonged to the shadows. That wasn’t a bad thing, or a good thing. It was just the way things were.

He heaved himself up, scooting to the edge of the bed and hugging his knees to his chest. His legs had been too gangly for the position to be quite comfortable for a long time now, but it was an old habit he’d never quite been able to shake, a relic from when making himself as small as possible made him feel invisible from the world, and therefore safe. Now, when it was no longer really possible to make himself small in any sense of the word, it was still a familiar gesture. A comfort. Notching his chin on his knees, letting himself stare at nothing so the nothing filled him up from his toes to his collarbones, felt like a ritual. Nothing sacred, but something he wanted to respect, nonetheless.

Today. Today was the ending of things. He could feel it in the rain, in the shadows on the wall. In the nothingness inside of him.

He fell backwards, letting his arms splay out on either side of him. Somehow, his eyes found the ceiling, and just for a moment, he let them stay there.

But not for long. He had to get out of here soon, or he would implode on himself, from all the emptiness, all the nothing.

This room felt too big for this bed, and this bed felt too big for him.

-

About an hour before noon, two knocks sounded on the door. Exactly two, no more, no less.

He walked to the door and opened it. It was Sonja, as he knew it would be, Sonja with her knuckles red from the cold outside and her favorite white scarf wrapped artfully around her neck. She didn’t have an umbrella with her, though Even knew from the view outside that it had started drizzling again about fifteen minutes ago. The raindrops that sat on her cheekbones almost looked like tears, or at least they would if he was feeling remotely poetic today.

“You didn’t go to school,” she said as she stepped inside. It wasn’t a question.

Even turned his body as she passed him, a well-worn instinct. A silent acquiescence. He’d been giving up things to her for so long, he hardly remembered how to do anything else around her. That was bad, wasn’t it? Then again, his concept of good versus bad had been fucked up for a long time, too.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll manage without me.”

She didn’t laugh, just took off her scarf and went into the kitchen. Which was fine by him, actually. At least he didn’t have to tell her he didn’t want her in his bedroom anymore. That used to be his favorite thing about her, how well she read between the lines, because that meant she understood him to his core, and he never had to explain a thing. He didn’t quite know what he thought about it in this moment. He still didn’t really want to explain himself at all. He just didn’t know if the reasons she read in his face and his words and his silences were the right ones.

By the time he finally mustered up the strength it took to follow her, she’d already set a kettle on the stove, two empty mugs sitting neatly on the counter beside it. She was sitting at the table, phone in her hands as she scrolled through something he couldn’t see, and she didn’t look up when he took his seat across from her, even as the chair scraped loudly against the floor. There was a time when he’d take the chair next to her, at kitchen tables like this or in restaurants or at school even, so their knees could bump against each other and he could hear her voice more clearly. And if they were in public, people would sometimes say that was cute, and more often would say that was strange, but he rarely cared what other people thought about the way he loved her.

It didn’t feel right to sit next to her anymore. He didn’t really understand why he cared so much about such a small thing, but it just didn’t feel right anymore.

The kettle went off after a few moments. Sonja placed her phone on the flat surface of the table and got up. When she came back, she was holding the two mugs, one blue, one green with a chipped handle. She gave Even the blue one, and brought the green one to her lips.

Even didn’t particularly want to drink tea right now, but he liked the way the warmth of the newly boiled water felt in his palms, so he wrapped his hands around the ceramic, and let them stay there.

He missed the days when the silence between them felt as warm as the tea in his hands. When it didn’t feel like it was going to bury him alive.

Of course, it was Sonja who broke it, when it was finally broken. He liked it better that way.

“What did you want to talk about?” she said, setting her green cup down in front of her carefully.

Even blinked. It had been a long time since she’d asked a question she actually expected an answer to, it felt like.

“You know, don’t you?” he said.

She looked down at her hands.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I think I do.”

He hadn’t seen that in a long time, either. Her softness. Her kindness, yes. Her patience. Her anger too, even; her frustration. But not her softness, which was beautiful to him in the way that certain beautiful things made his heart ache.

Most times, he would just leave it at that, would take her word at face value that she really did understand so that he wouldn’t have to answer her out loud. And what he was about to say next, he didn’t want to. He really, really didn’t. But he had to, didn’t he? He was so tired of his own unfairness.

“I really don’t think…”

Even swallowed. Just because he’d wanted to do this for a while, just because they both knew this had been coming, didn’t mean it didn’t fucking suck.

Sonja’s eyes were wide and unblinking. For a terrible moment, he thought she might try to finish his sentence. But she didn’t; just stared.

“I really don’t think this is working anymore,” he said, finally.

She didn’t flinch, or gasp, or anything, really. Her face was smooth, and still. Still as a windless desert.

“Oh,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, misery thick and sudden in his throat, because despite all the shit between them, despite everything, knowing that he was hurting someone he cared about was still the worst feeling in the whole entire world.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I felt it too.”

He blinked, once. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “What we had,” she said. “It used to be easy, didn’t it?” Here, she tried to smile, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, which now that he was looking, almost glistened in the grey morning light.

He looked down at the tea in his grip, the steam still faintly coming off of the surface of the murky liquid. “It’s so hard now, Sonja,” he whispered. “It’s so fucking hard.”

She let out a choked sob, then, and he knew it was a sob because of the sharpness of the breath she took in, and when he looked up her hand was over her mouth, and her face was turned to the side so he couldn’t see all of it.

It almost made him want to cry, too.

He reached out, took hold of her other hand. She let him, which felt kind of huge, somehow. It wasn’t a romantic gesture, or at least, it didn’t feel that way to him, not in the way it once did. But it didn’t hurt to hold her hand, either.

It just felt like the thing he was supposed to do.

-

After Sonja calmed down, she left the room, just for a few moments. When she came back, her face looked like she’d washed it, cheeks slightly pink and hair pushed back a little. She dutifully brought her empty mug to the sink, then sat back down.

“I need to tell you something else,” he said.

She frowned. Maybe she’d thought he had nothing else to say. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d made that assumption. “What?”

He took in a breath.

“There’s someone,” he said, and that was all he needed to say before the realization dawned in her eyes. Somehow, he’d already known that was all it would take.

“Someone,” she said flatly. “Another girl?”

His silence, he supposed, told her more than his words ever could.

“Oh,” she breathed out. “Last Friday.”

He closed his eyes. And the silence between them felt suffocating again.

“Do you love me, Even?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, because he did, he loved her in a way that four years of loving someone made permanent; he hated seeing her sadness, and to him that was the truest meaning of love there was.

“Do you love him?”

He didn’t respond, because the truth was, he didn’t want Sonja to be the first person to hear his answer to that question.

Besides, he knew she already knew what it was.

But he opened his eyes, just in case, and he looked at her, and he saw the exact moment when she saw it in his gaze.

Her lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smirk. “Do you think he’ll give you the things I didn’t?”

And now there was bitterness twisting through her words, a bite to them that almost made him flinch. It was a terrible thing for her to say, he knew it. They both knew it.

“Would that make a difference?” he said. “Because either way, you can’t give them to me. And I can’t give you what you need, either. Not anymore.”

He almost couldn’t believe how steady his words sounded. His hands were shaking, shaking so badly he had to put his cooling mug of tea down because otherwise, he was almost certain he would break it.

And just like that, she deflated, right in front of his eyes. He’d never seen a weight look so heavy upon her shoulders.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Even said, because it wasn’t. In truth, she hadn’t changed very much from when they first met, or done much differently. Their relationship hadn’t either, not on the surface anyway, and of course when it first began that’s what worked best for them.

And that was the crux of it, he supposed. He’d changed, and she hadn’t. There wasn’t anything either of them could have really done about it; it just happened.

She pursed her lips. “It’s not yours, either,” she said.

Which he knew. But it was nice to hear her say it, still.

-

She left not long after that, which was probably for the best. She pulled her coat tight around her shoulders and wrapped her scarf expertly around her neck, looking beautiful as ever. Her beauty had never been the kind of thing that caused him pain, though. Her beauty was the kind of thing that filled him with peace. Even now, while walking her to the door and knowing there probably wouldn’t be many times after this he’d do this with her.

She turned to him in the threshold. “I wish,” she began, and then didn’t say anything after that. Even supposed she didn’t have to.

He took her hand, one last time. “Good bye, Sonja,” he said.

She squeezed it. “I hope happiness finds you, Even,” she said. He knew from the look in her eyes that she meant it.

And then she pulled away from him, and was gone.

He closed the door behind her. He walked back into the kitchen, cleaned up the small mess, washed the dishes. The warm water was soothing against his skin, and when he looked up at the view outside the window, he could see the sun just starting to peek out among the clouds, too.

He let himself smile, just a little. He wouldn’t go back to school today, he decided. Tomorrow, he would.

Because if today was the ending of things, tomorrow would be a beginning. He knew these two things as surely as he knew anything.

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr](http://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/) is here. Thank you for reading!


End file.
